But that wasn’t the real reason, Ethan thought grimly. She was hiding something, he was sure of it.
Then that something was suddenly clawing its way up his spine and attacking the hairs at the back of his neck. It was written all over her, in those big green apprehensive eyes, in the unsteady tremor of her lovely mouth—in the very words she had said!
‘You’re in love with the bastard.’ He made the outright accusation. No wonder she’d felt compelled to find out why he had done what he had done! Why she didn’t want Ethan to go anywhere near him—why she was trying to protect the swine now!
Her chin shot up. ‘I’m what?’ she questioned in shrill surprise.
But Ethan was no longer listening. ‘I can’t believe what a fool I’ve been,’ he muttered. For him it was like lightning striking twice! First, he had got embroiled in Leona’s love problems. Now he found himself embroiled in Eve’s!
‘How dare you?’ she gasped out, dropping the surprise for indignant fury.
‘No.’ Ethan hit back by turning on her furiously. ‘How dare you get me mixed up in your crazy love life?’
He was angry; she was angry; the old hostile sparks began to fly. The air crackled with them, ‘That’s rich,’ Eve mocked, ‘coming from a man who is only here on this island because he’s in hiding after being caught red-handed with another man’s wife!’
The sparks changed into a high-voltage current. It was unstable—very unstable. ‘Who told you that?’ Ethan demanded.
Eve shrugged. ‘Leandros Petronades is a relative of Grandpa’s. He told Grandpa, and Grandpa thought I should know before I committed myself to you.’
‘It’s a lie,’ he declared.
Eve didn’t believe him. ‘Don’t insult my intelligence,’ she denounced. ‘Do you think I didn’t notice the bruise on your face when you arrived on the island? Everyone noticed it. In fact it was the source of much speculation.’
‘And the bruise on your neck?’ Ethan went in with the metaphorical knife and took some satisfaction from seeing her snap her hand up to cover the mark.
‘I forgot!’ she gasped out in impressive horror.
Ethan didn’t believe her. The brazen hussy hadn’t even bothered to cover the damn thing up! ‘How many more people have seen it and been equally imaginative about how it was put there?’
She blushed and looked uncomfortable. Ethan released a harsh laugh. ‘My God,’ he breathed, ‘you are unbelievable! Take my advice, Eve,’ he offered as his grim farewell. ‘Go back up to the house and tell your grandfather the truth before I do it for you.’
‘You wouldn’t…’
He was turning away when she said that. It brought him swinging back again. ‘I would,’ he promised. ‘And you know why I would do it? Because you are a danger to yourself,’ he told her. ‘You flirt with every man you come into contact with, uncaring what your flirting is doing to them. Then you have the rank stupidity to fall in love with a piece of low life like Aidan Galloway—And even after what he tried to do to you last night, you are still standing here protecting him! That makes you dangerous,’ he concluded, and tried to ignore her greyish pallor, the hint of tears, the small shocked jerk she made that somehow cut him so deeply he almost groaned out loud.
Instead he walked away, striding down the path towards the beach with so much anger burning inside him he had to reign in on just about every emotion he possessed, or he’d be doing something really stupid like—
Like going back up the path and taking back every rotten, slaying word he’d spoken, because he knew what it was like to be in love with the wrong person, didn’t he?
At least Leona was warm and kind and unfailingly loyal to her husband, he grimly justified his reason for not turning back. Aidan Galloway was a different kind of meat entirely. He was poison; he needed exposing before he tried the same thing with some other woman.
From a window in the main house, Theron Herakleides observed the altercation on the path down to the beach through mildly satisfied eyes. He wasn’t quite sure what the altercation was actually about, but he had a shrewd idea. Ethan Hayes had just been well and truly scuppered by his enterprising granddaughter and he was now in the middle of a black fury.
Served him right for seducing her, Theron thought coldly. If he hadn’t been so sure that Eve truly believed she was in love with the rake, the hell being wrought down there on his path would have been happening right here at his own orchestration.
But if his beautiful Eve thought he was going to let her throw herself away on a man like Ethan Hayes, she was so wrong it actually hurt him to know that he was going to have to show her just how wrong she was. So what if the man was an outstandingly gifted architect? So what if he, Theron Herakleides, had actually held him in deep respect until today? By tomorrow Ethan Hayes would be out of the picture, Theron vowed very grimly, and Eve was going to learn to recover from her little holiday romance.
With those thoughts in mind, Theron turned away from the window to pick up the telephone. ‘Ah—yassis, Leandros,’ he greeted pleasantly, and fell into light conversation with his nephew while glancing back out of the window to see the way Eve had been left standing on the path, looking like a thoroughly whipped peasant instead of the proud and brave goddess he believed her to be.
Ethan Hayes would pay for that, he vowed coldly. He was going to pay in spades for playing with the heart of a sweet angel when everyone knew he was in love with Leona Al-Qadim!
‘I am about to call in that favour you owe to me,’ he warned Leandros Petronades, then went on to explain what he required of him. ‘The sooner the better would be good for me, Leandros…’
Standing there on the sunny path, feeling as if she had just been reduced to dust by a man angry enough to tear down a mountain, Eve was carefully going over everything Ethan had tossed at her so she could be certain she had heard him correctly.
Aidan—‘Oh, good heavens,’ she gasped as the whole thing began to get even more confused and complicated. Ethan believed it was Aidan, not Raoul, who’d been with her in her bedroom last night!
The telephone was ringing as Ethan let himself into the beach house. He stood glaring at the contraption, in two minds whether to ignore it. He didn’t want to speak to anyone. He did not want to do anything but stew in the juices of his anger.